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Shortly after I got my iPad, I discovered something interesting. Whenever I visited one of the many web pages on my Snow Leopard Server with embedded videos created by Podcast Producer 2, the videos wouldn’t play. When I clicked the thumbnail, the image would just turn to a black square.

Some of you who read my blog know that I’ve written many posts about Podcast Producer 2, a key component of Snow Leopard Server. I’ve described various techniques for getting Podcast Producer 2 (PP2) to “play nice” with Windows Internet Explorer, and how I substituted the Quicktime plugin for the open source Flash player Flowplayer. Of course, Flash doesn’t work on the iPhone, but that wasn’t a major issue since Snow Leopard Server dishes up a different version of a PP2 page for iPhones. I had hacked together a solution that would serve PP2 videos inside Flowplayer when viewed on a computer browser, but serve PP2 videos inside the native H.264 player on the iPhone.

But my little cludge didn’t work on Mobile Safari on the iPad. That’s because Snow Leopard Server doesn’t serve up a different page for iPads like it does for iPhones. Perhaps this is deliberate, since the bigger screen real estate on the iPad doesn’t necessitate the compact presentation of an iPhone-optimized page. Or perhaps Apple didn’t include in the latest update to Snow Leopard Server specific user agent detection code to serve iPad-optimized pages.

Whatever the case may be, I reported this situation as a bug to Apple a few days ago. I had hoped that the most recent Snow Leopard Server update would include code that would produce PP2 pages that could be viewed on the iPad, but no such luck. Hopefully, this will come in an update down the road. But until then, I’ve developed a workaround.

Here’s how I got PP2 to play nice with the iPad…

First, I downloaded the open source javascript library Modernizr from http://www.modernizr.com. This little gem allows one to detect whether a client’s web browser can handle HTML 5. Mobile Safari on the iPad can display HTML 5 video, and in fact, Apple explicitly recommends using the HTML 5 VIDEO tag to display video on an iPad optimized page in this technote.

I put the Modernizr javascript file in my web directory (I just put it at the root level). Then I added a line in the custom wiki theme that I use for PP2 pages. The line I added is just a simple SCRIPT tag that references the Modernizr javascript file. Essentially, every page the PP2/Wiki Server produces that uses this custom wiki theme will include a call to the Modernizr javascript library. This wasn’t hard to do; in fact, the process was very similar to what I did to add a call to the Flowplayer javascript library that I described in great detail in a previous post.

Next, I added the following bit of code in the expandMedia function found in wiki.js (and compressed_wiki.js)…


else if (Modernizr.video) {
var objectHTML = '<video autoplay width="'+img.width+'" height="'+(img.height+(extendHeight?16:0))+'" src="'+fullSrc+'?sessionID='+server().sessionID+'" controls></video>';
embed.innerHTML = objectHTML;
Element.hide(img);
}


Essentially what this code does is call on Modernizr to test whether a browser supports HTML 5, and if so, uses HTML 5 to display the PP2 video instead of presenting it with the Quicktime plugin. I use the autoplay attribute to cause the video to click when a user clicks on the thumbnail. And the controls attribute causes the video to be displayed with whatever playback control bar is provided by the browser.

Again, I describe in great detail in this previous post the process for editing the wiki.js and compressed_wiki.js files, since I used a similar technique for swapping out the Quicktime plugin for Flowplayer. I would certainly recommend making backups of the original wiki.js and compressed_wiki.js files, as well as any modifications, since these files will likely be overwritten by future Snow Leopard Server updates.

With these changes, the Podcast Producer 2 videos on my website can now be played on an iPad. Indeed, as an added bonus, these videos are now displayed using HTML 5 on any web browser that supports HTML 5, like Safari and Chrome. The Modernizr script detects whether the page is being viewed in an HTML 5 capable browser, and if so, my code swaps in the appropriate HTML 5 code.

My iPad is happy now. Here’s hoping that the folks at Apple who maintain the Snow Leopard Server code will produce an update that will work with an iPad someday. Until then, my little hack seems to do the trick.

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Yesterday morning, at around 11:15 a.m., the doorbell rang. It was a friendly UPS delivery man, handing me a package from Apple. Inside, was my new iPad.

I was in the middle of a Skype conversation with some friends from Germany, so I took the opportunity to give them an exclusive look at me unboxing my new pride and joy. They were quite impressed, especially with how thin and sleek it looked. I promised to give them a better look when I’m in Germany this summer to attend a friend’s wedding.

I’ve had just over a day now with the iPad. I’ve already downloaded a couple of dozen apps, including a bunch of free ones and a few that I purchased. One of the apps that I’ve downloaded is the Wordpress application, which is what I’m using now to create this post. (I’m also using a bluetooth keyboard, which I find a bit easier to use than the onscreen keyboard for longer typing sessions.)

So far, I must say that I’m very happy with my purchase. The iPad is really a remarkable device. I had written earlier about how much I wanted one, and why. But now that I actually have one, I can honestly say it’s even better than I had imagined. Really. It’s that good.

What makes it so good? Let me mention my top three reasons why the iPad is my new favorite device. First, the iPad is super fast. Tap an icon, and BAM, you’re online. Tap another, and you’re looking at your email in one of the best email interfaces I’ve ever used. Tap another, and you’re reading a book, or watching a video, or listening to a tune, or playing a game. This thing is already making my laptop seem slow (and it’s a pretty fast laptop).

Second, the iPad is gorgeous. It’s aesthetically very pleasing. Elegant lines, with tastefully understated controls. Beautifully intuitive interface. Brilliant bright screen that’s easy on the eyes. It’s the kind of cool look you just want to show off to others. And yet for all its good looks, the iPad doesn’t get in the way of the content it displays, whether it’s a web page, a movie or an email. It just makes all of that content look great.

And third, the iPad is versatile. It does so many different things right out of the box. But when you start adding apps, and experiencing what developers have been able to do with the iPhone operating system on a bigger screen, you begin to realize this is so much more than a big iPod Touch. I like the iPod Touch, and I’ve owned a couple of them. But the iPad is so much more. And with more apps being added every day, this thing really does fill the niche between a laptop and an iPhone. And it does so very well.

Below is a screenshot of my first page of apps on my iPad. (And yes, the screenshot trick of holding down the home button and the power key works great.) Most of a second page is already full, and I imagine that by the end of the first week I’ll have a few more pages worth.

Some people have compared the iPad to netbooks and Amazon’s Kindle, but really, there is NO comparison. I’ve used netbooks, and they are mostly underpowered mini-laptops. I’ve used the Kindle, and while it’s a fine ebook reader, it’s a one-trick pony. And with the iBooks app, that pony is looking like an old mare.

It won’t take long for the iPad imitators to appear. After all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and there is plenty to flatter about the iPad. There already is something called a “JooJoo”, which is probably the closest to an imitation iPad out there right now. We’ll probably see Google push out the Chrome OS to a slate. I could see Motorola releasing a king-sized Droid. And of course, Microsoft will undoubtedly copy Apple; they always have. But by then, we’ll be talking about iPad 2.0.

Once again, Apple has a hit on its hands. Once again, Apple has led the way toward a new paradigm in computing. And once again, I’m very glad I bought an Apple product.

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The last couple of days I’ve been in Providence, Rhode Island attending the 2010 NERCOMP Conference. NERCOMP stands for “Northeast Regional Computing Platform,” and it’s essentially the Northeast regional affiliate of Educause. And Educause is, to quote their website, “a nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology.” I’ve been a fan of Educause for many years, and recently, of NERCOMP. I attended the NERCOMP Conference in 2008 and found it quite valuable. I also blogged the 2008 Conference rather extensively here on DrThompsen.com.

This year I decided to not blog in real time, as I did a couple of years ago. Instead, I tweeted real time, and took session notes in MacJournal to review and distill later. Here are three of the best ideas I gleaned from the conference…

Course trailers. I love this idea, something they started doing recently for undergraduate general education courses at Harvard. Essentially, these are two minute “movie trailer” plugs, highlighting what a class is about and why students might want to enroll. I wish all of the classes in our department had trailers. Then I could just point students to the trailer when they ask “what’s this class about?” Sure, we can put a syllabus online, but a little web video could really sell a class, and give students a better feel for what they’re getting into.

Facebook pages for historical figures. Another great idea: have students create, maintain and role play as important historical figures in your discipline. The session I attended described how this was done in an abnormal psychology course at Emerson College. Students created Facebook pages for Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud, Carl Jung, B.F. Skinner, Aaron Beck, Victor Frankl and other important historical figures in psychology. Students said they much preferred this kind of writing to a more traditional paper assignment. This would be a great activity for classes that cover a lot of history.

Tech Innovations TV show. Stony Brook produces a series of short web videos featuring faculty doing innovative stuff with technology. Post the videos on a web page and promote it to other faculty, as well as students, administrators and the community. The videos could be interviews done in a studio, but they could also be just simple videos recorded in a faculty office or classroom using a Flip camera.

Speaking of Flip cameras, I presented a “poster session” on how we’re using these little gems, along with Podcast Producer 2 and Flowplayer in support of our public speaking courses at West Chester University. If you would like to know, here’s a link to the screencast of my presentation. I enjoy the direct interaction enabled by poster sessions, but I wished I had time to visit some of the other poster sessions. I hear there were some good ones.

NERCOMP 2010 was a great conference. I got some good ideas, and hopefully shared a few. The “swag” on the exhibit floor was above average, and the food was good and plentiful. I definitely hope to attend another NERCOMP conference in the future.

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I’ve received quite a few comments about my previous post “Adding Flowplayer to Podcast Producer 2.” I’m pleasantly surprised by this feedback regarding my workaround to what is, in my opinion, a significant deficiency in Snow Leopard Server. I’ve responded to a couple of these commenters by direct e-mail, but perhaps it would be more efficient if I just shared the relevant code and provided some step-by-step directions.

Let me begin by speaking to this “significant deficiency in Snow Leopard Server.” As I said in my previous post: while there “might be valid reasons for Apple sticking with the Quicktime plugin rather than using a more modern-looking javascript player…I can’t think of any reasons that would excuse Apple from not providing its Snow Leopard Server customers with the option to make videos look as good as on Apple’s site.” I am still hopeful that Apple will come to the realization that they should share with their Server customers the javascript player code they use on their own site to present videos. It would be in their best interests to do so, especially given the recent comments by Steve Jobs that Adobe Flash is a “CPU Hog” and the source of 90% of Safari crashes. Committing Apple to standards-compliant HTML 5 is noble, and I agree that Flash deserves to be criticized. Flash does hog CPU cycles, and I’m a believer in the future of HTML 5.

But as a practical matter, Apple’s SL Server customers need to be able to deploy videos on the web NOW, and to be able to have those videos viewed by ordinary people using ordinary web browsers on ordinary computers…including the vast numbers of ordinary Windows computers out there. And the Quicktime plugin doesn’t cut it as a Flash player replacement. Isn’t that why Apple’s own web site uses javascript extensively to present videos without using Flash players? Apple doesn’t rely on the Quicktime plugin to present videos on its web site, so why do they sell a server product that uses the Quicktime plugin to present videos on the web? It isn’t for lack of javascript in SL Server: there’s oodles of it all over the pages produced by Wiki Server. And I suppose Apple could say you could roll your own javascript player to mimic what Apple does on their own web site, but why should we have to reinvent the wheel?

I suspect one reason why we don’t see the slick javascript used by Apple on its website integrated into Wiki Server is because Apple’s own web developers don’t talk much with the developers of Apple’s Server software. And that’s a shame. Steve Jobs, if you’re listening…could you get these two groups together for an afternoon of sharing? If you really want to wean the world off of Flash, why don’t you start by giving your server customers a real alternative to Flash—a full-featured javascript player—rather than relying on the Quicktime plugin in your server product?

Until Apple delivers a real alternative to a Flash player in their server product, here is my detailed description of the workaround I’ve developed. In essence, I have modified the javascript in Wiki Server so that videos are presented using Flowplayer (a very nice Flash player) rather than the Quicktime plugin. Here’s how I did it:

Step 1: Download Flowplayer from http://flowplayer.org/, and upload it to a directory on your web site. As I write this, a basic download of Flowplayer will include the files flowplayer-3.1.5.swf (the core flash player) and flowplayer.controls-3.1.5.swf (the core flash controller bar). It will also include (inside the example folder) the flowplayer-3.1.4.min.js file, which is some basic javascript you need to load into the pages where you want to use Flowplayer. (Technically, Flowplayer will work without this bit of javascript, but in most cases you will want to have this javascript loaded onto your pages so that you can use Flowplayer’s javascript API.) So in order to add this javascript reliably, I add a SCRIPT tag that references this file in a custom theme, which is the next step…

Step 2: Create a Wiki theme that includes a reference to the Flowplayer javascript. The easiest way to do this is to copy an existing theme and make changes to the copy. You’ll find these themes in /Library/Application Support/Apple/WikiServer/Themes/. I used the Snowleoplard theme as the basis for my custom theme. I opened a terminal window, changed to the theme directory, and used the ditto command as root to make an exact copy like this…


cd /Library/Application\ Support/Apple/WikiServer/Themes/
sudo ditto snowleopard.wikitheme/ customthemename.wikitheme/


Replace “customthemename” with a descriptive name of your choice (no spaces). In my case, I called my new theme “snowleopard-wcu.” If you have the “Wiki Server Administration” manual handy, you might want to refer to chapter 3 for more information about creating a custom theme. There you’ll see that an important step is to edit the theme.plist file so that your new custom theme can be selected in the wiki settings. At the very least, you’ll want to change the “display name” and “name” values to match your new theme. Here’s what my custom theme’s plist file looks like…


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>displayName</key>
<string>WCU Theme</string>
<key>name</key>
<string>com.apple.snowleopard-wcu</string>
<!--
<key>mobileHeaderColor</key>
<string>#3772bc</string>
-->
<key>commentSortDirection</key>
<string>DESC</string>
<key>version</key>
<string>2</string>
</dict>
</plist>


Now I need to add a line to the theme’s default.xsl file that inserts the Flowplayer javascript file. Below is the relevant portion of my default.xsl file (with the vertical ellipses indicating there is code above and below this snippet):

.
.
.
<xsl:template match="page">
<html lang="{context/locale}">
<head>
<script src="http://communication.wcupa.edu/flowplayer/flowplayer-3.1.4.min.js" language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript"></script>
<!-- meta tags -->
.
.
.


Of course, you’ll want the URL in the src attribute to point to where you’ve saved your flowplayer-3.1.4.min.js file (please don’t point to mine!). Now save the default.xsl file, and reboot the wiki server by issuing this command in a terminal window…

sudo serveradmin stop teams; sudo serveradmin start teams;


Alternatively, just issue the stop command, wait for confirmation, then issue the start command. Once the wiki (teams) service has restarted, go into a wiki that you want to change to the new theme. Login, click on settings, and click the “choose themes” button (on the Blog tab). If all went well, your new custom theme should be available in the list. Select it and click OK.

Now you have a theme that will include this all important little bit of Flowplayer javascript on every page. Wherever you want Flowplayer, use this theme. If it’s important that you have Flowplayer in all of your themes, I suppose you could make the changes I describe above to all of your themes. But keep in mind that Apple could overwrite the stock themes that come with SL Server in a software update. If you want to insure Flowplayer works even after a software update, I recommend that you use a custom theme.

Step 3: Edit the wiki.js and compressed_wiki.js files to use Flowplayer instead of the Quicktime plugin. These two files are essentially the same, although the compressed file isn’t formatted with a lot of spaces and indents. It’s a lot easier to edit the wiki.js file, and then just use your favorite text editor to do a search and replace to make the exact same changes in the compressed file.

First, make a backup of these files, just in case. Both of these files are located in usr->share->collaboration->javascript. Make a backup of the files using your favorite method (using ditto in the terminal or just copy using the finder). Put the backups in a safe place. I can’t stress this enough: save a backup of the original files in case you need to revert to them.

Next, open wiki.js in your favorite text editor (I use TextMate). We’re going to change the value of the variable objectHTML. Here is what this variable looks like before our edit…


var objectHTML = '<object classid="clsid:02BF25D5-8C17-4B23-BC80-D3488ABDDC6B" width="'+img.width+'" height="'+(img.height+(extendHeight?16:0))+'" codebase="http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab"><param name="SRC" value="/collaboration/fake.qti"><param name="QTSRC" value="'+fullSrc+'?sessionID='+server().sessionID+'"><param name="TYPE" value="video/quicktime"><param name="SCALE" value="aspect"><param name="AUTOPLAY" value="true"><param name="CONTROLLER" value="true"><param name="TARGET" value="myself"><param name="BGCOLOR" value="'+backgroundColor+'"></object>';
// Firefox wants only an embed tag, and it has to be written using innerHTML. Also, have to hide image *first*
if (MozillaFixes.isGecko) {
Element.hide(img);
embed.innerHTML = '<embed src="/collaboration/fake.qti" qtsrc="'+fullSrc+'?sessionID='+encodeURIComponent(server().sessionID)+'" type="video/quicktime" autoplay="true", controller="true" target="myself" bgcolor="'+backgroundColor+'" width="'+img.width+'" height="'+(img.height+(extendHeight?16:0))+'" pluginspage="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/" scale="aspect" />';
}


…and here is what this variable looks like after my edit…

var objectHTML = '<object width="'+img.width+'" height="'+(img.height+(extendHeight?16:0))+'" data="http://communication.wcupa.edu/flowplayer/flowplayer.commercial-3.1.4.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"><param name="movie" value="http://communication.wcupa.edu/flowplayer/flowplayer.commercial-3.1.4.swf" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="flashvars" value=\'config={"plugins":{"controls":{"height":"16","backgroundColor":"#330033","timeColor":"#eeee99", "progressColor":"#cccc99","bufferColor":"#774477","sliderColor":"#777777","timeBgColor":"#222222"}},
"key":"#####","clip":{"url":"'+fullSrc+'?sessionID='+server().sessionID+'"}, "canvas":{"backgroundColor":"#550055"}}\' /></object>';
// Firefox wants only an embed tag, and it has to be written using innerHTML. Also, have to hide image *first*

if (MozillaFixes.isGecko) {
Element.hide(img);
embed.innerHTML = '<embed src="http://communication.wcupa.edu/flowplayer/flowplayer.commercial-3.1.4.swf" allowFullScreen="true" bgcolor="#333333" width="'+img.width+'" height="'+(img.height+(extendHeight?16:0))+'" align="middle" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage=http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" flashvars=\'config={"plugins":{"controls":{"height":"16","backgroundColor":"#330033","timeColor":"#eeee99", "progressColor":"#cccc99","bufferColor":"#774477","sliderColor":"#777777","timeBgColor":"#222222"}},
"key":"#####","clip":{"url":"'+fullSrc+'?sessionID='+server().sessionID+'"}, "canvas":{"backgroundColor":"#550055"}}\' />';
}


Note that you’ll want to change the src values to point to the URL of the location of the Flowplayer swf file that you’re using on your site. I’m using the commercial version on my site, although I’ve changed the key value in this post to just #####. I don’t think the Flowplayer folks would like me sharing my key value, and besides, I don’t think it would work outside of my domain anyway. If you’re not using the commercial version of Flowplayer, take out this key value. I’m not sure if all of the “flashvar” options I’ve set here will work in the same way with the noncommercial version, but I think most will, as I don’t think I’m doing anything too exotic. You might want to change the color values of the player to match the look of your site, and fiddle with the flashvars to taste.

Once you’ve changed the value of the objectHTML variable in wiki.js (and in compressed_wiki.js), I would suggest backing up these modified files, and saving them in a safe place. That way, if a software update ever overwrites these javascript files, you can easily copy back your modified files. Of course, I’m hoping that one of these days, a software update to SL Server will modify this variable so that it doesn’t use the Quicktime plugin, but until that day comes, you can use the method I’ve described here to use Flowplayer instead.

You may need to restart your server after making these changes. And you may need to study my code and the example code on Flowplayer.org to get Flowplayer looking just right on your site. But with patience and determination, you should be able to get Flowplayer running on your site without too much trouble.

I hope this helps those of you who commented on my previous posts, and anyone else in a similar situation who stumbles across this post. And if you discover any additional tweaks or insights into this process, please consider sharing in a comment.

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Apple has officially announced the iPad. And iWant one.

The iPad hasn’t even been officially released, and it’s already being panned by critics who just don’t get it. Moments after the iPad announcement, Fake Steve Jobs (Dan Lyons) called it “underwhelming.” Many see it as just a big iPod Touch or an “iPhone on steroids.” Others compare it to Tablet PCs, which have been largely unsuccessful. Some wonder if the iPad will be just a newer Newton, one of Apple’s biggest flops. There are those who are disappointed by the lack of a camera. Or the apparent inability to support Flash content. Or the big bezel around the 4:3 ratio display. Or the onscreen keyboard. Or a host of other nitpicking criticisms that, in my mind, miss the whole point of iPad.

And that point is best summed up by Jonathan Ive in the opening lines of the promotional video: “When something exceeds your ability to understand how it works, it sorta becomes magical. And that’s exactly what the iPad is.”

Yes, the whole point of the iPad is to be magical. Sure, one can already do much of what the iPad can do on a laptop or an iPhone or an iPod Touch. And many of the initial criticisms of the iPad have come from comparisons to other things that can do what the iPad can do.

But I don’t want an iPad because of what it can do. I want an iPad because of how it will do it. And from what I’ve seen, it does indeed look like magic. Understated elegance. Intuitive interface. Brilliant display. Screaming fast. Amazing price. Serious magic.

And iWant that magic.

I don’t want the iPad to replace my MacBook. Nor do I want it to replace my iPhone or iPod. And I don’t expect it to. Yes, I will probably use the iPad to read my email, keep my calendar, show off my photos, listen to my tunes, watch some videos, and surf the web. But I don’t want an iPad just to do those things. I want an iPad because I want to do those things (and more) in a new way, a fun way, even a magical way.

And iWant what could be the iPad’s killer app: iBooks and the iBooks Store. I’ve been holding off on getting a Kindle. I was really tempted to buy a Nook. But I’ll put down my money for an iPad, so I can read books in full color, on a bright, backlit screen. I know there are those who say it will be hard on the eyes, that monochrome e-ink displays are better. I don’t think so. I’ve spent some time with a friend’s Kindle, and I didn’t find it particularly easy on the eyes. If anything, I found it harder to adjust to an e-ink display after spending most of the day looking at a computer screen. Maybe my eyes are different. Or maybe I just don’t buy the argument that a black-and-white display is somehow better than one in full, glorious color. Go figure.

And even if my eyes do tire after an hour or two of reading iBooks on an iPad, at least I can do something else with it besides read books. A whole lot more than I could do with a Kindle, or a Nook. And for not a lot more money.

It would be nice if Apple gave an educational discount on the iPad. Apple typically does give a small price break to educators and students. It wouldn’t surprise me if they didn’t give one on the iPad, at least not at first. But I would be very surprised if Apple didn’t eventually have some kind of promotion to make the iPad even more affordable for the education market. Perhaps in their next “back to school” promotion, in time to get iPads in the hands of college students everywhere. Who knows? Maybe the iPad will even make reading textbooks fun again. OK, maybe reading textbooks was never fun. But I’ll take anything I can get that would help my students get more out of reading them.

So let the naysayers and critics write all the negative reviews they want. I’ve heard this kind of reaction to Apple products before. Some people have been calling the Mac a “toy” since the day it came out in 1984. Some people predicted the iPod would never catch on, and that the iTunes store would never be successful. Some people even thought the iPhone would be a flop. And some people today think the iPad will be a failure.

Some people never learn. If there’s one thing Apple can do, and do well, it’s create products that people want. And I firmly believe that people are going to want the iPad. Lots of people.

I know iWant one.

Tags:   Apple · iPad · TechnologyNo Comments.

Yesterday, a tremendous earthquake struck Haiti, one of the poorest nations in the world. I’ve been thinking a lot about this tragedy in the last 24 hours, praying for the victims and survivors, and hoping that the relief effort will be swift, compassionate and comprehensive. As I write this, the extent of death and destruction is not yet clear. But from what I’ve heard from news reports, the Haiti Earthquake of January 2010 appears to be one of the worst natural disasters of this century, possibly even more devastating than the Indian Ocean Tsunami of December 2004.

I’ve also been observing how journalists, and especially broadcast journalists, have been covering this story. I first heard of the news on CNN. Wolf Blitzer broke the story during his “Situation Room” broadcast a few minutes after 5 p.m. My wife was watching CNN when the first announcement was made, and soon both of us were scanning the various news channels for updates. We checked out the Fox News Channel and MSNBC, but we kept coming back to CNN, since, for at least the first few hours after the earthquake, CNN had the most comprehensive and detailed reports.

Indeed, I was a bit shocked by how little attention this story received on Fox News Channel and MSNBC during the first few hours after the earthquake hit. CNN was covering the story nonstop from when the news broke shortly after 5 p.m. Fox had a brief “Fox News Alert” around 5:30 during the Glenn Beck show, but didn’t provide any extensive coverage of the story. MSNBC broke the story a bit later than Fox with an update during “Hardball.” But again, MSNBC, like FNC, didn’t give much more than a brief mention about the tragedy unfolding a few hundred miles southeast of Florida.

CNN did what a news channel should do when a big story like this hits: interrupt regular programming, stick with the story and provide as much information as you can to viewers. Both Fox News Channel and MSNBC instead relied mostly on their pre-recorded talk programs. On Fox News Channel, Bill O’Reilly interviewed Sarah Palin, who recently became a regular contributor to Fox News. The only mention of the Haiti Earthquake I noticed on FNC during the O’Reilly show was in the scrolling ticker at the bottom of the screen. Similarly, I didn’t hear Keith Olbermann mention the tragedy at all during his show on MSNBC. To her credit, Rachel Maddow did spend a significant part of her show covering the Haiti earthquake, but by then CNN had been covering it nonstop for nearly 4 hours.

I’m rather disappointed that the only cable news channel that stayed with this story from the beginning was CNN. I can understand why MSNBC might have a hard time covering breaking news, as they have the most limited news resources among the three major news channels. But one would think Fox News Channel could have broke away from their routine prime-time lineup to cover a story of this magnitude. While FNC might not have quite the same number of reporters in the field as does CNN, I think they could have pulled out the stops if they had wanted to do so. They certainly could afford to do so. Fox News Channel is watched by more people than CNN, and those higher ratings have helped swelled the bank accounts of Rupert Murdoch and the News Corporation, which owns Fox (as well as the Wall Street Journal and many other media properties).

So why didn’t Fox News Channel, the broadcast news flagship of a company called the “News” Corporation, break away from their pre-recorded prime-time lineup of commentary shows to provide breaking news coverage of the earthquake in Haiti? One can only assume this reflects contrasting “gatekeeping” philosophies, about what is newsworthy and what isn’t. Last night on Fox News Channel, Sarah Palin’s debut as an FNC contributor was news. Last night on CNN, the earthquake in Haiti was news. With all due respect to Ms. Palin, I think CNN made the better journalistic choice.

Tags:   broadcasting · journalism · Media · News · televisionNo Comments.

Today I had another breakthrough in my implementation of Podcast Producer 2, a core part of Snow Leopard Server. As noted in my previous posts, PP2 is “still a work in progress,” but it is also a vast improvement in many ways over my previous video transcoding system based on ffmpeg and Drupal. I’ve been consistently impressed with the quality of the videos produced by PP2, although the file sizes are a bit larger than what I squeezed out of ffmpeg. But one thing that hasn’t impressed me is the “plain vanilla” look and minimal functionality of videos presented using the Quicktime plugin.

I realize there might be valid reasons for Apple sticking with the Quicktime plugin rather than using a more modern-looking javascript player. But for the life of me, I can’t think of any reasons that would excuse Apple from not providing its Snow Leopard Server customers with the option to make videos look as good as on Apple’s site. Almost everywhere you look on Apple’s website, you see snazzy-looking Quicktime presented in cross-platform stable players, typically built in javascript. Even the new Quicktime player that is included with Snow Leopard client gives you a javascript option when exporting a video for the web. So why didn’t Apple provide a javascript player option with Podcast Producer 2? At the very least, Apple could have provided some configuration hooks to make it easier to do something other than present videos using the Quicktime plugin.

But where there’s a will…there’s got to be a way. And my “breakthrough” today was in finally finding that way. It isn’t using one of the various javascript players you can find on Apple’s site. Those aren’t at all well-documented, and trying to piece together something workable from the clues found in page sources is not my idea of a fun afternoon. No, the player I’m using to present the Quicktime videos produced by Podcast Producer 2 is Flowplayer, a really great little Flash-based player.

With my previous ffmpeg/Drupal system, I had been using a Flash-based player to present the videos: the venerable JW Player (now a product of Long Tail Video). But for a variety of reasons, I couldn’t get this player to work right with the m4v Quicktime files produced by the PP2 system. And the look of JW Player is getting a bit dated, although not nearly as dated as the look of the Quicktime plugin. Flowplayer, on the other hand, is modern-looking, clean and well-documented. The key to getting Flowplayer to work with PP2/Wiki server was finding just where to put the code…something that I mentioned at the end of my last post.

So today, after editing some code in the wiki.js and compressed_wiki.js files (both located in usr->share->collaboration->javascript), I now have Flowplayer injected instead of the Quicktime plugin whenever a user clicks on a thumbnail. The main edit was to the objectHTML variable (quoted in my previous post). In essence, instead of referencing the Quicktime plugin, I referenced the SWF player file included in Flowplayer, and passed to it the same parameters that had been going to the plugin. To keep things in line with the way the Quicktime plugin had been injected, I used the OBJECT method of inserting Flowplayer. To keep Firefox happy, I echoed this change using the EMBED method found in the embed.innerHTML variable in the code right below the objectHTML variable. I also tweaked the height adjustment, adding 24 pixels to video files and 8 pixels to audio files (using extendHeight?24:8) to accommodate the slightly higher control bar of Flowplayer. And to get the Flowplayer javascript file loaded, I added a call to this file in the head of the default.xsl file in the Wiki theme folder (and in the enclosed compressed folder). And that’s pretty much it.

Now videos on my site look so much better, with a decent looking control bar that I can customize to my heart’s content. Time indicators? Check. Slick color instead of boring monochrome? Check. Volume slider you actually notice? Check. Seek bar with time points? Check. Big bold play and replay buttons? Check. Options galore for tweaking things just right? Check.

It did take some effort to get my head around the code I needed to adjust in Apple’s javascript files. And yes, my changes will most likely be overwritten by a software update, so I’m being careful to backup my edits. But now that I understand where to make the changes, and how, I think I will continue to use Flowplayer instead of relying on the stock Quicktime plugin to present PP2-produced videos.

At least until Apple does the right thing and finally brings to their Server product a decent javascript player…like the ones that have been used for a long time on Apple’s own web sites.

Tags:   Apple · Mac · Technology8 Comments

In my last post, I wrote about my experiences with Podcast Producer 2: the good, the bad and the downright ugly. Well, I had a bit of a breakthrough today in getting Podcast Producer 2 to “play nice with Windows,” so I’m posting my “new and improved” workaround.

As I described earlier, the main problem is the way PP2 posts videos to user blogs maintained by Wiki Server (which is a core part of Snow Leopard server). The primary culprits are the width and height tags that are included in the IMG tag that is written to the blog entry. If the video files were of a small resolution, PP2 would typically write out height tags that were empty, which breaks Internet Explorer on Windows, since IE assumes an empty height tag means a height of zero. But even if the video files were at a larger resolution, PP2 would write out width tags that were narrower than the actual width of the video file, presumably to make the thumbnail smaller than the video. That breaks any browser on Windows, since the Quicktime plugin for Windows doesn’t seem to be able to scale videos to fit within the dimensions defined by smaller-than-actual width and height tags. It works fine on a Mac, since it appears that the Quicktime plugin for Mac can shrink videos to fit into whatever dimensions are defined in a web browser.

My workaround was to manually edit these entries, removing the width and height tags. This would make the thumbnails full size, the same size as the associated video files denoted in the ALT attribute of the IMG file (a rather non-standard use of the ALT attribute, but that’s another issue). This workaround was a lot of work: manually editing the HTML of each and every video file produced by my server had become a daily chore. In the last month, I had edited over 1,000 blog entries. But at least the videos would play on Windows.

I had originally thought I should be able to fix this by changing the code found in the “_podcast.html” file found in the WikiTemplates folder in Library->Application Support->Apple->WikiServer. After all, this file looks like the exact template used by PP2 when it posts to WikiServer. But even though I removed the width and height attributes from this template file, it had no effect on the blog entries posted by PP2. I have since found that these templates are not used by PP2; they are used by WikiServer itself. That is, when you go to a user blog, click the plus sign to manually add a blog entry, and select the option to add podcast content, the resulting code is drawn from the _podcast.html file in the WikiTemplates folder. So PP2 must be getting the code from somewhere else.

Today I found out where: in a line of code in /usr/lib/podcastproducer/actions/wikiserver.rb. Near the top of this file is the following line…

MOVIE_ERB_TEMPLATE = "<%= h($properties[\"Description\"]) %> <br> <br> <img src=\"<%= poster_image_url %>\" alt=\"<%= published_url %>\" width=\"<%= width %>\" height=\"<%= height %>\" class=\"aligncenter posterimg\" />"

Bingo. I just took out the width and height tags from this line and restarted the server. Now PP2 doesn’t write out the width and height tags when it posts video podcasts. And I no longer have to manually edit the posts produced by PP2 to enable them to work on Windows. Hallelujah.

While studying this file, I think I discovered what may be the reason why PP2 is mucking up the dimension attributes. Further in this file are these lines of code…

if width > 480
height = PcastQT.info(input_published_path, "height").to_i * 480 / width
width = 480.0
end

So if I understand this correctly, what this does is check if a video is wider than 480, and if so, force it to stay at a width of 480 and adjust the height downward proportionally. That is, if a video has standard “VGA” dimension of 640 wide by 480 high, this bit of code forces it to be 480 wide by 360 high (the original height 480 multiplied by 0.75, or 480/640). And again, this scaling of the thumbnail downward is what seems to be breaking the Quicktime plugin on Windows.

I’m still not sure why videos that are smaller that 480 wide are being posted by PP2 with an empty height attribute, but I have a theory. I notice that in this section of code that the width is explicitly defined by this line of code:

width = PcastQT.info(input_published_path, "width").to_i

But height is not explicitly defined UNLESS the “if width > 480″ is evaluated true. This could be why I’ve discovered that for smaller submitted videos (say at a resolution of 320 by 240) the code being posted by PP2 has an empty height attribute (specifically, height=”"). But whether or not this theory is correct, I’m happy that I’ve discovered a fix. By removing the width and height attributes completely from the MOVIE_ERB_TEMPLATE line of code, I’ve effectively addressed both the empty height attribute problem and the scaled-down width attribute problem.

Of course, Apple is likely to rewrite this file with a software update. Here’s hoping they correct this problem, so that I don’t have to hack the same file in the future. But just in case, I’ve documented my fix here for my reference, and potentially for the benefit of others frustrated trying to get Podcast Producer 2 to play nice with Windows.

UPDATE: I think I’ve discovered where the code lives that swaps out the video file for the thumbnail when you click on it. It appears to be in the javascript file wiki.js at /usr/share/collaboration/javascript/wiki.js. Near the bottom of this file is an “expandMedia” function that’s part of the QTMediaExpander class. The “objectHTML” variable appears to contain the code that embeds the Quicktime object…

var objectHTML = '<object classid="clsid:02BF25D5-8C17-4B23-BC80-D3488ABDDC6B" width="'+img.width+'" height="'+(img.height+(extendHeight?16:0))+'" codebase="http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab"><param name="SRC" value="/collaboration/fake.qti"><param name="QTSRC" value="'+fullSrc+'?sessionID='+server().sessionID+'"><param name="TYPE" value="video/quicktime"><param name="SCALE" value="aspect"><param name="AUTOPLAY" value="true"><param name="CONTROLLER" value="true"><param name="TARGET" value="myself"><param name="BGCOLOR" value="'+backgroundColor+'"></object>'

I don’t think I should try to hack something here now, not with a PP2 server filled with 1200 videos and counting. But perhaps between semesters or over the summer break I’ll poke around here to see if I can’t get a prettier javascript Quicktime player instead of the plain vanilla Quicktime interface provided by the Quicktime plugin. Many people have requested a player that displays the elapsed time of the video, something I know is possible since Apple has such players on their own website (including here, for example).

Tags:   Apple · Mac · Technology · Video · Windows5 Comments